


The tapestry of their skin

by lastwagontrainhopper



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Royai Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24674746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastwagontrainhopper/pseuds/lastwagontrainhopper
Summary: One day, when all this mess is behind them, Roy and Riza will have to explain to a curious kid how they managed to get so many scars.--Written for Royai Week 2020, prompt: Old wounds
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	The tapestry of their skin

The Mustang’s house, with its two floors and its front garden, was surprisingly small considering the position Roy had held, but neither he nor Riza wanted to display their new fortune ostentatiously. They both knew the way Amestris had acquired its wealth, and using that blood money to buy something as superfluous as a mansion wouldn’t have sat well with them. Besides, what was the point of having a huge villa if it was only for two people?

They had moved in together as soon as they had been married, and had married as soon as they could; Roy had made sure of that. On the last day they had descended HQ’s main staircase, both ordinary citizens for the first time since their teenage years, he had got down on one knee and proposed, amidst the flow of working officers and traffic noise of the street close by.

Riza had raised an eyebrow, amused by the situation.

“Isn’t it a bit rushed?”

He had shrugged his shoulders with a grin.

“Maybe”, he had admitted sheepishly. “But I figured we’ve waited long enough.”

Riza had let out a chuckle. “Yes, that’s for sure.” Her eyes were shining. “And yes.”

They had kissed and embraced, enjoying the pleasure of doing it in public, and especially of doing so before the symbol of what had kept them apart for so long. And, just like that, they were gone, one arm wrapped around the other’s waist, before any officer passing by could realize that something incredible had just happened.

Their marriage had been equally modest, celebrated a few weeks later in a small country church. The event had not been kept secret, of course – they had had their fill of secrecy – but Riza loathed the idea of an official ceremony with great pomp and circumstance, and Roy had had enough of playing the public figure.

The newspapers had made mention of the event, but only the people on the short guest list had been able to attend the ceremony. For them, the wedding was no surprise – everyone who mattered to Roy and Riza already knew about their relationship – but it was rather a way to make it official, and mostly to celebrate their long years of work and patience. Weddings are usually the beginning of a journey ; this one felt more like the end of a story.

A perfectly happy ending, if it wasn’t for one detail.

They wouldn’t have dared to dream of it at the beginning of their relationship, following the Promised Day – even getting married seemed impossible back then – but as their lives progressed toward something almost normal, the idea of having children came up more and more in their minds. Of course, it would have to wait: a pregnancy would force Riza to withdraw from the military at least for a time, and it could lead to some troublesome questions if the baby turned out to look like a certain colonel. But above all, their careers were demanding and dangerous, and both had suffered too much from absent parents to risk inflicting this on their child. Therefore, they had agreed that if it were to happen, it would be at the reasonable moment, after Roy’s Führer reign.

Unfortunately, not all things in life can patiently wait for the right time.

By the time Riza reached her thirty-fifth anniversary as Roy was still only general, they realized that the reasonable moment might come too late.

Nonetheless, they kept hanging on to the small hope that it could happen. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time they would see something impossible happen before their eyes. Besides, they told themselves, some of the problems could be overcome – the Elric had offered to take care of one more kid, if necessary – and others would be worth it. If Riza ever got pregnant, they finally decided, they would make the decision at that time.

But that moment never came.

Maybe it was because of Riza, maybe it was because of Roy, or maybe they were just incompatible; neither of them bothered to find out. They saw a sort of poetic justice in the idea that their couple, which together had taken so many human lives, was not able to create one. Of course, they didn’t share that thought with anyone, not even with each other – but if there was one thing they shared, it was their love of mystical punishments.

So by the time they moved in their little house not far from Central, they had long given up on their dream of amber-eyed and black-haired children.

But after a few years spent tending to their wounds as best as they could, what they had thought impossible finally happened, though in a vastly different way than they expected. It took the form of a six-year-old boy whose mother, an Investigation officer, had died from a bomb in her apartment, and whose father had never been in the picture. No one from his maternal family had come forward to take him in, and his chances of adoption were slim : he was already too old for the taste of most couples, and the explosion that killed his mother had left a nasty scar on his face and arm.

A scarred child, orphaned by military service, with an absent father : the symbolism was so strong it seemed made on purpose, and Roy and Riza didn’t fail to notice it when they read the notice sent by HQ. They did not trust themselves enough to be good parents to have voluntarily tried adoption; but no one, no one, would want this child, they were told. Surely, they would be better than nothing?

And so Adrian – the boy’s name – came to live in their house not far from Central, which suddenly seemed even smaller.

When he first arrived, the child was silent and withdrawn, undoubtedly still in shock at the brutal way he had lost his mother. But Roy and Riza were better with kids than they gave themselves credit for : after all, they came to see Edward Elric’s children so often that they were seen as aunt and uncle – which had always had a bittersweet feeling to it. But above all, they understood the boy’s wounds better than anyone else. And so, over the course of the next months, thanks to the patient and attentive care of Roy and Riza, the kid started to open up.

His parents taught him many things. He learned that not all wounds were worn on the skin ; he also learned that none of them, visible or not, defined who he was. And he was surprised to discover that his parents had even more scars than he did.

One day where Riza was carrying him to bed, when he was eight years old, Adrian put a finger on the long white line that ran across her neck.

“Mom, how did you got that?” he asked curiously.

Riza simply smiled.

“Oh, that’s just an injury I got when I was in the military. It happened when I was fighting along with your dad.”

Adrian frowned, no satisfied. “Yes, but hooow?”

She sat him on the bed and crouched to be at his level.

“Adrian”, she started softly, “it’s not very polite to insist like that. Some people don’t want to say how they got their scars; that’s personal. “She tapped the lumpy mark that stretched across his left cheek with affection. “I’m sure you can understand that.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “But I don’t mind talking about it. You and Dad always say I should be proud of it and proud of what Mama was doing. And I prefer the people who ask.” He frowned, looking grouchy. “The people who don’t ask just stare at it, and I can tell that they want to know, but they don’t ask. That’s even more annoying.”

Riza tilted her head to the side, her expression softening.

“Ah, but you know that not everyone is as wise of you are, sweetheart.”

She kissed his forehead, put him to bed, and wished him good night. He never asked about it again.

But as Adrian was growing up, he began to realize that his parents had way more scars than the norm, even for people who had been in the military. Riza had her white mark across the neck, but there was also her right hand, with its stiff fingers who couldn’t properly bend and its painful joints. Roy’s hands weren’t much better, with their identical wound in the middle of the palm; and when he went bare-chested, the large burn on his left flank was impossible to miss.

But the worst one was the thin vertical gash he had on the right side of his torso: it was the worse, because it was the most painful one – preventing him from running and jumping comfortably – but also because every time it caused Roy to flinch in pain, Riza couldn’t hide her guilty expression. The remorse on her face was so powerful that Adrian almost started to believe that she was the one who stabbed him (could she be the one who stabbed him? His parents fought from time to time, but never to that extent…or so he thought).

And then, there was Riza’s back. Adrian had never seen it, and that was the strange part. Even when they went to the beach, she always kept a shawl or a sweater to cover it. Knowing his parent’s history, he couldn’t think of any other reason to hide it than the presence of yet another scar, surely a particularly repulsive one.

Despite his curiosity, he never asked about any of their wounds, and they never brought up the subject. He had a vague idea of what his parents had lived through, like everyone in the country – Ishval’s civil war, the Promised Day, the Aerugo Invasion. And his parents liked to reminisce about their time in the military, but it was always about the mundane moments : the discussion with their squad, the Elric brothers’ visits, the mountain of paperwork Riza had to threaten Roy into signing.

But Adrian knew his parents hadn’t received all their injuries by filling out paperwork.

And yes, he knew that Roy and Riza were more than just their scars, but those injuries were still part of them, part of their lives ; not knowing where they came from, or not being trusted to even see them sometimes made him feel like he didn’t know his own parents.

And he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if Roy and Riza would have been more open about their past had he been their real son.

When he was 14, Adrian touched on the topic with Edward, during one of their visits to the Elric. Even though his children were about his age, Edward was much younger than his parents, and often acted like an old cousin rather than an uncle. More importantly, he _loved_ telling the stories he and his brother had lived, even though Adrian suspected him of omitting certain details.

Edward didn’t have much to say at the time ; but a few weeks later, his parents called him in the living room with a serious look on their face, and Adrian suspected that Ed must have had something to do with it.

They had a heart-to-heart discussion like they rarely had in their family – Adrian had certainly inherited their tendency to keep his real emotions far below the surface – and when they were finished, the three of them with tight throats and slightly watery eyes, Roy coughed a few times and finally put his joints hand on the table.

“So…which story do you want to hear today?”

“We would probably point out,” Riza added while attempting a smile, “that we’re certainly not as good at storytelling than Edward.”

Adrian thought about it for a moment. He knew his father would be more willing to share than his mother, and wanted to start out with something light. His hands’ wounds had always unsettled him – a scar could be accidental, but two of them, exactly at the same place, had something more sinister, more…deliberate. He wouldn’t dare to ask about the gash on his torso: he could guess it was related to a particularly painful memory for the both of them.

“Your burn, on the ribs,” he finally chose.

To his relief, Roy grinned.

“Well, I must say that you, my son, have a taste for the spectacular.” (Riza looked up at the sky : “I wonder where he got that from”.) Roy glanced at her mischievously. “This story is also the first time your mother shed tears for me.”

“And certainly, the last one”, she completed in a neutral tone. “Come on now, start, or we’ll be here all day.”

**Author's Note:**

> Here it goes! Thanks for reading.
> 
> btw - I always struggle so much with titles in English. I can never tell if they sound cringy or unnatural or whatever. Please tell me if it does, I always need some native speaker's opinion :P


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